This post was originally part of Carbon-izer.com and later spun off to Numbered Exits, where it was combined with a post on Village Flowery (current Numbered Exits post here.
When it began construction of a building fronting Kirby in May 1948, Wagner Hardware already had been a known name moving from the Rice Village area, and after completing the building at 6111 Kirby Drive, continued to operate for the next 60 years. At one point, Wagner Hardware had six locations in the Houston area. By December 2004, with the closing of their store at 5233 Bellaire Boulevard (which operated since 1953), Wagner was down to this location. In 2009, it introduced a store-within-a-store for eco-friendly products called "New Living". Not too long after, the store changed hands and the store was remerchandised and rebranded to the "New Living" concept. Most of the hardware lines were dropped for furniture and mattresses in addition to paint, and in 2014, New Living dismantled the old Wagner Hardware sign above the store. Between 2015 and 2017, New Living refocused from "sustainable design and furniture" to simply "organic mattresses". I'm not sure how the transition between New Living and Houston Natural Mattress (the similar replacement tenant) occurred, but it happened between October 2019 and March 2020. They had different phone numbers. (Street View here).
